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#NeverClue

George W. Bush destroyed the Republican Party, by which I mean he sundered it, broke its constituent pieces apart and set them against each other. He did this on spending, the size of government, war, the ability to prosecute war, immigration and other issues.

Were there other causes? Yes, of course. But there was an immediate and essential cause.

And this needs saying, because if you don’t know what broke the elephant you can’t put it together again. The party cannot re-find itself if it can’t trace back the moment at which it became lost. It cannot heal an illness whose origin is kept obscure.

Pretty fresh. “Ripped from the headlines,” you might say. And of course, accurate.

Who is this pundit with the trenchant insight? Peggy Noonan—more than eight years ago. Yet nearly a decade later, all the “principled conservatives” still don’t know who broke the elephant, or how they helped. They #NeverWill.